Already in prehistoric times (the oldest European cave-paintings were created approximately 32,000 years BC), mankind tried to create artefacts containing or representing information in some way. Yet, it was the introduction of writing systems that first allowed to represent complex information persistently, and to hand it down over generations in a reliable way. With the invention of movable type printing as a second key step in the development of information society, it was also possible to provide written information to a very large audience. In the following, information about both writing systems and movable type printing will be given.
Date Event
≈ 32000 BC Earliest known cave paintings in Europe
≈ 4000 BC Development of a first writing system in Sumer
≈ 3200 BC Earliest known hieroglyphic inscriptions 593 First printing press invented in China 700 First newspaper available in Beijing
868 Earliest known complete woodblock printed book (the “Dia-mond Sutra”) is printed in China
≈ 1040 Invention of movable type printing in China by Bi Sheng 1450 Introduction of movable type printing in Europe (invented
in-dependently by Johannes Gutenberg) 1455 Release of the Gutenberg Bible
Table 3.1:History of writing and printing
3.1.1 Writing Systems
Writing is a “form of human communication by means of a set of visible marks that are related, by convention, to some particular structural level of language”
[Enc08]. It enables “the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols” [Wik08n]. Especially the use of alphabets, i.e., standardised sets of letters, allowed to efficiently represent such informa-tion. Important steps in the development of writing systems are shown in Ta-ble 3.1 [Wik08n, Wik08h, Wik08i, Wik08d].
Although writing systems provided an efficient way to represent information, the creation and thus also the copying of such information was still very time-consuming. Thus, resources that contained information were rare, and one can speak of an era of scarcity concerning the availability and accessibility of in-formation. In Europe, this scarcity was often even reinforced by the political systems in which the writings existed – in these systems, access to information was only allowed for privileged members of society.
3.1.2 Movable Type Printing
Techniques to reproduce texts (and also images) were first invented in Asia, where woodblock printing was used to print information on textiles and paper.
In the following centuries, these techniques were refined, wherein the invention of movable type printing was the major step towards the ability to reproduce
3.1 Writing and Printing
information on a large scale in a quick and durable way. Technically it was then possible to make information available to very large audiences (of course, this usually only included alphabetised circles) in a far more convenient way than before. Still, information was tied to a physical medium such as a newspaper or a book.
Table 3.1 gives an overview of the most important events towards the devel-opment of modern printing technology.
3.1.3 Electricity and Computers
Although industrialisation led to several technological advances in the 18th and 19th century, communication above the level of smoke signals, semaphore sys-tems or similar techniques was still tied to physical transportation, i.e., the in-formation had to be physically carried from a sender to a receiver. With the invention of electrical telecommunication in the 1830s systems such as electrical telegraphs appeared [Wik08l, Wik08f]. Information could be transformed into electric signals, and these could be transformed into information again. So it was now no longer tied to a physical medium. With the existence of respective infrastructures, information could then be provided to a very large audience over very large distances almost immediately. Simple telegraphy was followed by the invention of the telephone, and more complex technologies such as radio and TV followed. Table 3.2 gives an overview of the most important steps in this development.
Still, the transformation and distribution process usually was only possible with a loss of quality (at least when it concerned more complex information than just a telegram). And whereas almost everyone could be a consumer, the publishing of information was only possible through a complex and controlled process, where few people in the broadcasting media acted as gatekeepers. For example, producing a TV program and transmitting it to a large audience re-quired the existence of a very expensive technical infrastructure, and it was only possible for organisations that had access to the available distribution infrastruc-ture required for broadcasting the signals to the end users.
Computers
Calculating machines such as the abacus existed a long time before the first de-vices existed that are today called “computers”. They allowed to manipulate information represented in form of discrete values. Such a discrete representa-tion is called digital (from the Latin word digit for finger or toe), although one
Date Event
1206 Invention of the water clock, a water-powered astronomical clock, by Al Jazari. It is considered to be the earliest programmable ana-logue computer.
1623 Invention of the first digital mechanical calculator by Wilhelm Schickard
1792 First fixed visual telegraphy system between Lille and Paris by Claude Chappe
1820 Creation of the first commercially successful mechanical calculator by Charles Xavier Thomas
1839 First commercial electronic telegraph by Charles Wheatstone and and William Fothergill Cooke
1832 Classroom demonstration of wireless telegraphy by James Lindsay 1837 Electrical telegraph by Samuel Morse
1866 First transatlantic telecommunication using a telegraph cable 1876 Conventional telephones invented independently by Alexander
Bell and Elisha Gray
1884 First electromechanical television system patented by Paul Nipkow 1900 Wireless transmission of a human voice by Reginald Fessenden 1901 Establishment of wireless communication between Britain and the
United States by Guglielmo Marconi
1920 Broadcast of the first radio news program in Detroit, Michigan 1925 First contemporaneous transmission of moving, monochromatic
images with continuous tonal variation by John Logie Baird
1928 Broadcast of the first transatlantic television signal between London and New York
1929 First publicly announced television broadcasts in Germany and the United States
1936 Invention of the first freely programmable computer (Z1) by Kon-rad Zuse
1946 Development of ENIAC, the first electronic general-purpose com-puter
1971 Invention of the microprocessor by Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin, and Stanley Mazor at Intel
Table 3.2:History of telecommunication and computers [Wik08l, Wik08f, Wik08j, Wik08e, Wik08m, Wik08g, Wik08b, Wik08c]